Blog
Notes from the booth
Practical guides on identifying, hunting, organising, digging and playing. Written by people who DJ.
How to find a song from a TikTok when the sound is "original audio"
A TikTok original sound song has no name attached, but the track is usually findable. Six ways to identify it, from tapping the sound to reading the deck.
Audio fingerprinting versus reading the screen: how track detection actually works
How does audio fingerprinting work, why it fails on mixed or pitched audio, what Chromaprint and ACRCloud do, and how reading the deck screen fills the gaps.
How to build a DJ set with an energy arc
How to build a DJ set that rises, peaks and lands: rating energy, choosing openers and closers, moving BPM and key on purpose, phrasing, and reading the room.
How to find new music as a DJ, without doomscrolling
How to find new music as a DJ: the sources worth checking, following people not genres, working back from sets, and making digging a weekly routine.
How to find unreleased music before everyone else
How to find unreleased music: promo lists, private SoundCloud links, label follows, radio rips and forthcoming tags, and how to avoid the fakes.
How to follow a label so you never miss a release
How to follow a record label for new releases: Bandcamp and Beatport follows, mailing lists and promos, and monitors that check the shops daily.
How to organise a DJ music library that will still make sense in five years
How to organise a DJ music library: one folder, tags that do the sorting, a key and energy scheme, a tested backup, and the Rekordbox and Traktor traps.
Is it out yet? Tracking a track until release
How to get a track release date notification for an ID you heard in a set: pre-orders, pre-saves, label follows and daily store checks.
Reading the deck: how to get an ID from a Rekordbox or CDJ screen in a video
How to pull a track ID from a CDJ screen or Rekordbox display in a clip: what the screen shows, which deck is live, and how to read a blurry frame.
Why Shazam fails on DJ sets, and what works instead
Shazam not working on a DJ set is normal: pitch, mixing, phone recordings and unreleased tracks all break it. Here is why, and the methods that do work.
The Camelot wheel, explained for people who actually mix
What the numbers and letters mean, the three safe moves, the energy boost trick, a full Camelot to Open Key to musical key table, and where key detection lies.
How to find a song from an Instagram reel, even when Shazam fails
Five ways to identify the track in a reel, from the free tricks that work half the time to the method that reads the deck screen.
How to identify every track in a DJ mix on YouTube
Description, comments, 1001Tracklists, Shazam's blind spots on a mix, the deck screen, and how to fingerprint a whole set into a timestamped tracklist.
WAV, AIFF, FLAC or MP3: what to actually play out
Lossless against lossy on a club rig, tagging, USB sizes, which CDJs refuse FLAC, and why the sensible setup is lossless at home and 320 or AIFF on the stick.
What does ID mean in DJ sets, and how do IDs get found
ID, ID - ID, dub, VIP, forthcoming: what the words in a tracklist mean and how an unidentified track eventually gets a name.
Where DJs buy music in 2026
Beatport, Bandcamp, Traxsource, Juno, the iTunes Store, labels, promo pools and Discogs: what each is good for, and why streaming is not owning.